Soon, we will be teaching computational geometry courses to football commentators.
If a player is going to be substituted we’ll hear sentences like: “no surprise he’s being replaced, his Voronoi cell has been shrinking since the beginning of the second half!”
David Sumpter, the author of Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game, wrote a nice article over at Medium The geometry of attacking football.
As an example, he took an attack of Barcelona against Panathinaikos.
and explained the passing possibilities in terms of the Delaunay triangulation between the Barca-players (the corresponding Voronoi cell decomposition is in the header picture).
He concludes: “It is not only their skill on the ball, but also their geometrically accurate positioning that allows them to make the pass.”
Jaime Sampaoi produced a short video of changing Voronoi cells from kick-off by the blue team, with the red team putting pressure until a faulty pass is given, leading to a red-attack and a goal. All in 29 seconds.
I’d love to turn this feature on when watching an actual game.
Oh, and please different cell-colours for the two teams.
And, a remote control to highlight the Voronoi cell of a particular player.
Please?
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